Toward IoT Smart Homes That Make People Happy

Masao Isshiki

DirectorSmart House Research Center
Kanagawa Institute of Technology

1. Introduction

Kanagawa Institute of Technology Smart House ResearchCenter is conducting research on “IoT smart homes that makepeople happy.” There are two aspects regarding IoT smart homes
as residences. The first is the “smart” aspect, i.e., using energy
intelligently (energy savings and conserving electricity). The
second is providing residences that promote prosperous lifestyles
for people. Both aspects are advancing daily with Internet ofThings (IoT) technology. IoT means the use of Internet
technologies that connect various devices while creating newvalue.
This article describes how IoT smart homes will evolve in thefuture with respect to the latest government policies on residences.

2. N ew Basic Housing Plan (revised after
five years) with “new normal” and “DXpromotion” as key words

In March 2021, the Basic Housing Plan was revised after
five years[1]. This plan is a basic policy on housing to achieve

Yuji Sasagawa

Research Staff
Smart House Research Center
Kanagawa Institute of Technology

prosperous lives in homes based on a law called the Basic Act forHousing, which was enacted in 2006. It sets housing targets forthe next ten years, and is revised every five years. It is referred to as
a compass for housing policy for the near future. An outline of thenew Basic Housing Plan is shown in Figure 1.
Several new notable themes are shown in Figure 1 regarding
the current issues with housing, such as climate change, newlifestyles, and digital transformation (DX) promotion. The new
Basic Housing Plan introduced three new goals to address theseissues. From the viewpoint of the social-environmental change,goals 1 and 2 were set to indicate policy directions for handling“new normal” and disasters such as heavy rainstorms. From theviewpoint of housing stock and the housing industry, goal 6 was
set to indicate policy directions for achieving carbon neutrality by
2050.
For goal 1, which denotes new daily life and DX, the following
two directions were devised to achieve new lives in homes.
(1) Promote the diversification of residential styles to meet
people’s new thoughts on living and the f lexibility for■ Figure 1: Overview of new Basic Housing Plan

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residential location choices according to people’s living
conditions.
(2) Promote DX of housing contracts and trade processes andof house construction and management processes using
new technologies.
Regarding direction (1), the background on the issues withhousing for “new normal” is the increasing interest in new anddiversifying ways of living prompted by reforming of working
practices and the aftermath of COVID-19. New residential
situations, such as the increase in suburban and rural living owing
to the increase of telework, or having multiple residences are
becoming common. To adapt to these new situations, schemes,such as promoting environmental arrangements, have been set as
basic policy to support telework and other new working practices.
Regarding direction (2), the background includes advancesin new services and technology on the basis of 5G installationand expanding social and economic DX. It also includes therapidly expanding DX in the field of housing, such as remoteand non-contact customer handling and digitalization prompted
due to the aftermath of COVID-19. Schemes, such as AIassisted designing and all-stage DX, i.e., design, construction,maintenance, management, and disposal, are listed as the basic
policy to promote the use of new technologies in housing-contract,trade, construction, and management processes.
Note that in the Basic Housing Plan, DX promotion is
described from the perspective of housing suppliers or enterprises.
We describe our thoughts on housing DX in later sections.
For goal 2, which denotes establishing safe housing
and residential areas and securing houses to people aff licted
by increasingly frequent and intense disasters, installation offacilities such as renewable-energy equipment and storage batteries
is being promoted by government projects to support energysaving residences such as net-zero energy houses (ZEHs)[2], which
contributes to increasing resilience in housing. Note that thestandard equipment for a ZEH is the home energy management
system (HEMS), which is the infrastructure for managing energy
consumption and controlling home devices, such as appliances.
It can also contribute to goal 6 discussed below, with respect tosaving energy in the home.
For goal 6 which denotes building house recirculation systems
for a decarbonized society and forming good-quality housing
stock, the spread of energy-conserving houses such as ZEHs is an
important initiative toward achieving carbon-neutrality by 2050.
IoT smart homes will of course be equipped with HEMSs;
therefore, we believe that its expansion will contribute to achieving
these goals.

3. What is housing DX?

What is meant by DX? In Japan, the Ministry of Economy,
Trade and Industry (METI) has published Digital GovernanceCode[3], which defines the DX as, “by use of data and digitaltechnology by enterprises in response to intensifying change

2New Breeze Autumn 2023

in business environments, reforming products, services andbusiness models based on the needs of customers and society,and also reforming the business itself: organization, processes,
and corporate culture and climate; to establish competitive
superiority,” indicating that enterprises should take initiatives.
However, the historically first definition is attributed to Prof. Erik
Stolterman of Umeå University in Sweden, who in 2004 proposed
it to mean “improvement in all aspects of people’s lives through thepermeation of IT[4]”. Perhaps housing DX fits this latter definition
better. Thus, we assume that promoting housing DX means“’fertilizing’ people’s lives.” We also expect that the use of digitaltechnologies for communication between residents and housing
suppliers or providers of residential services on the corporate side
will also contribute greatly to DX on the corporate side.

4. ECHONET Lite: key technology forpromoting housing DX

A ZEH, as described in the previous section, is equipped witha HEMS. The first objective of introducing HEMSs is to provide
visualization of the energy consumption of connected devices toencourage users to actively conserve energy. Therefore, a HEMS
requires more devices to be connected to it, so the communication
technology used for the interface (language) between devices is akey issue. In November 2011, METI formed the “Smart House
Standardization Study Group” to study measures promoting
energy saving and conservation of electricity in homes, and thisstudy group recommended ECHONET Lite as the standard
communication interface between devices connected to a HEMSin the home and smart meters (Figure 2)[5].
■ Figure 2: ECHONET Lite: HEMS communication interface

Homes have various appliances and other household
equipment, and in the past, most manufacturers used different
rules for communicating with their products, which resulted
in problems such as the inability to manage them centrally andservices no longer able to be used if a device was replaced witha product from a different manufacturer. A decision was madeto unify and standardize communication rules to resolve such
issues. This was a significant decision and became the rationale

for ECHONET Lite as the base communication technology forsmart homes and HEMSs. The features of ECHONET Lite areas follows.
1) It is a communication technology based on the InternetProtocol (IP).
2) I t is a non-vendor-specific communication technology.
3) It defines detailed control commands at the level of handy
remote controllers (defining more than 100 types of devices)4) It can use various standard transmission media (wired LAN(Ethernet), wireless LAN (Wi-Fi), etc.).
5) I t is an international standard (ISO/IEC 14543-4-3).
6) The specifications are open to the public (in Japanese andEnglish).
As stated in 1), ECHONET Lite is based on IP, soconnectivity to the Internet is assumed; thus, all ECHONET
Lite devices can be called IoT devices. With the ECHONET Lite
recommendation as the communication technology for HEMS inJapan, the infrastructure for conversion to IoT has already beenbuilt.
To what extent have ECHONET Lite devices spreadthroughout the world? The ECHONET Consortium, which
created the ECHONET Lite specifications, has been publishingstatistics for shipped devices classified in the major productcategories since FY2013 on its web site[6] (Figure 3). In FY2013,
there was approximately 4.7 million units shipped, while in
FY2022 there was approximately 140 million units shipped. The
residential smart meters, that accounts a good portion of thestatistics, have been installed in basically all homes in Japan. The
consortium has voiced the direction to expand healthcare-related
products and will contribute to IoT transformation of homes.

5. State of housing DX expansion

Next we examine the expansion of ZEHs, which are homes■ Figure 3: Cumulative numbers of shipped or scheduled
ECHONET-Lite-compliant devices

equipped with HEMS and ECHONET Lite devices. Figure 4
shows the year-to-year progress in the percentages of ZEHs
among newly built and scheduled homes up to FY2021. The
government target for FY2020 for the spread of ZEHs was that
50% or more of newly built or scheduled houses by home builders
should be ZEHs, and, as shown in this figure, this target wasachieved in FY2020 (56.3%). However, it should be noted that aZEH is not the same as housing DX. A ZEH only means thata platform for housing DX has been installed, and 70–80% ofhomes in Japan are still built by local contractors, so the spread ofZEHs is just beginning. However, the government’s declaration
for carbon neutrality by 2050 is expected to strengthen policy
for residential energy saving, and we expect this to promote thespread of ZEHs. COVID-19 has also resulted in trends suchas increased telework, so the number of residences with goodInternet environments has been increasing steadily, and we expect
this will also result in the advance of housing DX.

■ Figure 4: Percentages of ZEHs as newly built and scheduled homes

New Breeze Autumn 202336. Housing also entering “Software First” era

There is a manufacturing approach called “Software First”,
in which products are manufactured with the assumption thatthey will be updated. Familiar examples of devices manufactured
with this approach are PCs and smartphones. Both hardware andsoftware (services) had been basically developed together, but by
updating software, improvements can be made such as updating
the user interface or providing new services, even if using the same
hardware. With the development of Internet technologies, thespeed of software advances has exceeded that of hardware, which
is a major driving factor for the approach. Of course, hardware
also needs to be updated periodically, so it still provides value thatcannot be improved through software, but the important role
software plays in improving the utilization of that hardware isundeniable.
Actually, it seems that this “Software First” concept isgradually entering development in the automobile industry, soperhaps this approach will also become more important in housing
in the future (Figure 5). Also in housing policy, themes such as
promoting long-term high-quality housing, increasing activity
in the used/older/resale housing markets, building long-lasting
housing, and utilizing existing housing are becoming important.
Considering such conditions, it seems that software development
can play an important role in housing, supporting changes inthe social environment and lifestyles. Of course, it is importantto have ease-of-use so that those not proficient in information
technology will not be left behind. Key points include userfriendly design and low-cost, so that anyone can use features easily.
For Japan, with its aging population, it is even more important to
prepare environments so that all, including both the child-rearing
generation and the elderly, can enjoy the benefits.
■ Figure 5: Updatable homes

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7. Conclusion

With the aftermath of COVID-19, advancing DX has becomea target of housing policy, and we expect various residential
services to emerge through the Internet in the future. We also
expect this to become a design assumption for the “hardware”
of housing. Through the promotion of energy-saving housing,many household appliances and residential equipment and devices
have become IoT compliant. Houses are used over many years
and change gradually over long periods, but the environment forbuilding “Software First” housing seems to be falling into place.
In the future, enterprises supplying housing and residential service
providers are expected to promote housing DX. We hope to also
be able to contribute to this effort through collaborative researchwith enterprises. We hope that housing DX will lead to homebuilding initiatives that bring happiness to everyone.
References[1] Basic Housing Plan (Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism)
https://www.mlit.go.jp/jutakukentiku/house/jutakukentiku_house_tk2_000032.html (inJapanese)[2] N et-zero energy house (ZEH) related published information (Agency for Natural Resourcesand Energy):
https://www.enecho.meti.go.jp/category/saving_and_new/saving/general/housing/index03.html (in Japanese)[3] D
 igital Governance Code (Ministry of Economy, Trade and industry, 2022/9/13)
https://www.meti.go.jp/policy/it_policy/investment/dgc/dgc.html4) Erik Stolterman,
Anna Croon Fors (2004) “Information technology and the good life”, Information Systems
Research Relevant Theory and Informed Practice[5] S mart House Building Standards Study Committee, Interim Summary (draft)
http://www.meti.go.jp/committee/summary/0004668/011_04_02.pdf (in Japanese)[6] E chonet Consortium web site
https://echonet.jp/shipments/ (in Japanese)[7] Sustainable Open Innovation Initiative, “Net-zero-energy House Demonstration Project
Study Presentation Documents, 2022/12/04 (in Japanese)
https://sii.or.jp/opendata/#prj6 (in Japanese)